


Bourbon and Poor Choices

by Call_It_Alba



Category: Olympus Has Fallen (Movies)
Genre: F/M, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-06
Updated: 2020-04-06
Packaged: 2021-03-01 19:27:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23512342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Call_It_Alba/pseuds/Call_It_Alba
Summary: Prompted from the scene where Mike tells the President that he is made from 'Bourbon and Poor Choices'. There is no plot.What if Mike had known the President and his wife for many years, and when he said he was made from 'Bourbon and Poor Choices' it meant more than just a joke? What if each major decision Mike had ever made was because of that motto? What are these decisions.Unbeta'd
Relationships: Benjamin Asher/Margaret "Maggie" Asher/Mike Banning, Benjamin Asher/Mike Banning, Leah Banning/Mike Banning
Comments: 2
Kudos: 22





	Bourbon and Poor Choices

**Author's Note:**

> This was literally written at 1am and I am only posting because I am bored.

Bourbon and poor choices. It had been a joke. But in some ways it was the truth. It was the truth about how he lived his life. 

He had fallen in love with a man and a woman when he had been in the military. It was frowned upon today, and even worse back then. So he had tried to walk away but he couldn’t. No matter how much he tried he couldn’t. 

The man was Ben Asher, future President of the United States of America, the future leader of the free world. And that was someone who could not be seen as gay or being anything outside of what was viewed as normal. The woman, Maggie, she was and always would be the first love of Ben’s life. But they both pulled him in. 

They both made sure he had a safe place to return to when he came home. And they would piece him back together, piece by piece, and hold him tight until the glue settled. 

Eventually, Maggie spoke the words that Mike had worried about hearing. She was pregnant. And the biological father, well that was him. And being a father… again. That wasn’t in the plans for him. He cried as he admitted that to Ben and Maggie but both of them just pieced him back together and assured him that he didn’t have to be. 

Hayes Banning was his daughter, and he did everything he could for her, but it was the toughest thing he had ever faced. And he had been to war to defend his country more than once. She was both the light of his world and the darkness that threatened to drown him. She was the person he lived for, but he was also scared to die for. He knew what it was like to not have a father, and that was something he never wanted Hayes to experience. 

And that was also why he pushed Ben and Maggie to hide Connor’s true parentage. Ben was the perfect father for Connor and he was excited about the baby. More excited than he could be. And so it was an easy decision. Connor wouldn’t lose him as a father in the same way that Hayes might. 

The relationship was pushed to the back burner when it was time for Ben to focus on preparing to run for President and that was something that would be a lot easier if Mike was only a friend. A Godfather to Connor. And a father to Hayes. Not the third wheel of their marriage. 

Connor Jameson Asher. Connor because it was the one name that Maggie, Ben and Mike had agreed on. Jameson after Mike, because Ben and Maggie wanted to ensure that Mike was still there as much as possible. 

Until Maggie died. And it was all Mike’s fault. Which meant that he was removed from the White House Detail and therefore from Ben and Connor. Ben who couldn’t look at him. And Connor. Conor, who was just finding out the truth about who he really was. It had always been Maggie’s plan that Connor would learn the truth. That Connor would learn of the history between Mike, Maggie and Ben, and just how much Mike had been forced to sacrifice. And whilst Mike didn’t view it as doing anything other than what was best for Connor, both Maggie and Ben believed that it was. That Mike had sacrificed his chance of a son, and a relationship that brought him happiness. 

Bourbon and poor choices. The action that gave him his daughter. Hayes Banning. His blue eyes, brown haired, lovely daughter. It had been bourbon he had been drinking that night, at a party. Now why there was bourbon at a party for university students, Mike would never know and never ask, but there was and that was what he was drinking. 

He had been determined to get drunk. To get so drunk that he would stop dreaming of Ben and Maggie. Drunk enough that he would just act and not think. And that’s what happened. He got drunk, he slept with a pretty girl - Sarah. And nine months later he was holding his daughter. 

He and Sarah had been clear from the start. They would work together to raise their daughter but a relationship of anything more than co-parents and maybe friends was not on the cards. In fact, Sarah became his best friend from it all. 

He would never change his daughter for anything in the world because whilst she led to some of the darkness that he fought hard to stop. She was the light of his life. And her mother, she was his confidant and was more than willing to give him any push that he needed. However, he did wish that the circumstances surrounding them all had been different. 

He wished he hadn’t needed to be drunk that night, that Sarah hadn’t responded to his advances and agreed to sleep with him so that people would stop accusing her of being gay. And he wished that they hadn’t used each other. 

Bourbon and poor choices. That’s how he proposed to Leah. He loved her. Not the same way that he loved Ben and Maggie, but not the way that he loved Sarah either. It was somewhere in between both relationship types. 

He had been drunk when he decided to propose to Leah. And once it had appeared in his head he was determined that it would happen. So after enough bourbon that it wouldn’t hurt too much if she said no, but not enough that he would forget the experience either, he got down on one knee in the living room and asked her to be his wife. It was not as fancy as when Ben proposed to Maggie but it was right for them. In that moment. 

Soon it was hell again and he regretted pushing Maggie and Ben away. And he had to deal with Leah begging him not to be who he was meant to be. He would always run head first into danger, he would always teach Connor how to slip the security detail, and he would sit with a bowl of ice cream and a funny movie whilst Hayes recovered from a broken heart. 

He had watched Maggie die, and then he had been forced away from Ben and Connor, his son. Because for as much as he tried to push that idea as far away as he could, he couldn’t stop it. Whether he liked it or not, Connor was his son and he would always feel the need to protect him. It wasn’t the same as with Hayes, with Hayes there was only him and Sarah to protect her, to make sure that she was safe and had someone to rely on. But Connor, he had had Maggie and Ben, and the family that surrounded them. 

Leah didn’t understand. She thought that it was just a friendship that had started when Mike had started working the Presidential Protection Detail. She didn’t understand that it was more than that, that Mike was a part of the relationship between Ben and Maggie, that they were the reason his world turned around for a very long time. He was the Godfather to Connor for more reasons than the fact that Connor carried his blood and he wanted Ben to raise the child. He was Godfather because Ben and Maggie were his best friend and he would do anything to protect their son and their values. It was more than that though, Ben and Maggie were Godparents to Hayes as well. And Sarah, who knew more about him than anyone alive except from Ben, had pushed him to make that decision. 

But still Leah, the woman he was going to marry, thought that he could just walk away. That he could just say that he was done and that he wasn’t going back. She thought that he could be a regular member of society. But he couldn’t and it wasn’t just because of his relationship with Ben and Maggie, or the true parentage of Connor, or because he had a daughter who looked up to him in a way that he had never thought anyone would. 

Bourbon and poor choices. That started the day that he signed up. The day that he decided he would join the rangers. He didn’t want to be like his dad, but he wanted to serve his country. He wanted to protect the flag for the future generations to come. He wanted to ensure that America lived up to what it was meant to represent - the land of the free.

He came home the day after he turned eighteen, and managed to break his mother’s heart. He had planned to tell her what his plan was before he had gone to the recruitment officer, however, every time he had tried to broach the subject his mother had shut down the conversation. So at eighteen, he enlisted and then came home to tell his mother. The woman who had raised him alone since his father had taken off because he was unable to live with the demons of what he had done in the military. 

That decision definitely fell into the category of poor choices, and was part of the reason why he began to drink when he was making any of those poor choices. His mother had reacted in three ways when he told her that he had enlisted. She had sobbed, terrified that he would be deployed and not return home. Then she had screamed at him, questioning why he had thought that it was ever a good idea to enlist, had he not learnt how the military would destroy him after his father had walked out of their lives. And finally, she made a decision which would lead him straight to the rest of the bourbon fuelled poor choices that he would make. She told him that he had an hour to pack his bags and leave, never to return again. 

Mike had never been an overly emotional person before, but as he had packed what he could into his two duffle bags he could not stop the tears that leaked from his eyes. His mother had always been his rock, he had never really needed his dad when his mum would give him any advice that he had ever been looking for. He knew where he could go thankfully, but that didn’t mean that this had been pleasant. He had left that night, spent a month sleeping on the couches of friends before he left for basic training, and he would love to say that he never looked back, but he went home - went back to his mum’s house every time he came home on leave. 

Bourbon and poor choices. That was why he thought it was a brilliant idea to sign up to join the rangers. And that was something he would never talk about. The horrors he had witnessed, the horrors he had caused. The only thing that had kept him going was Ben and Maggie piecing him back together and holding him tight as the glue set. 

The day he found out about Hayes, that he was going to be a father, he had just returned to bases after spending more hours than he wanted to recall shooting and killing, stabbing and killing, fighting and killing. He had blood on his hands, and yet those hands were expected to hold a baby in his hands and protect her without leaving a mark or a stain. 

The day that he decided to leave the rangers, that he wouldn’t sign back up, was the day that Ben proposed to Maggie. He couldn’t tell if he made the decision that his time was up because he was worried about not having someone there to piece him back together, or because he didn’t think he could continue to face the atrocities of war any longer. But he knew that it was the right decision. 

Bourbon and poor choices. His motto. His saying. How he lived his life. 

Bourbon and poor choices. They had been poor choices but they had never stopped him from ending up with some of the best things in his life. And if he was honest, the bourbon had just eased the way. 


End file.
